|
Waikato Times
March 14, 2001
Final door appears shut on Ellis' hopes to clear name
NZPA
When convicted paedophile Peter Ellis walked out of
prison a year ago, it was supposedly as a free man.
But Ellis and supporters maintain his sentence for sexually abusing children
at Christchurch
civic creche won't be finally over until he has cleared his name of the
crime. Now, the final door appears to have shut on those hopes.
It was announced yesterday that the governor-general had declined Ellis'
appeal for a pardon.
Following an inquiry by the former Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Eichelbaum,
Justice Minister Phil Goff said he had advised the governor-general against a
pardon.
"Sir Thomas spent over 400 hours studying the tapes, trial transcripts,
Court of Appeal decisions and other material relevant to Mr Ellis' conviction,"
Mr Goff said.
Sir Thomas was also advised by two international experts on child abuse and
child testimony. Both experts considered the evidence of the children
involved was reliable.
In his report, Sir Thomas said: "The case advanced on behalf of Mr Ellis
fails to . . . satisfy the inquiry that the convictions were unsafe, or that
a particular conviction was unsafe. It fails by a distinct margin; I have not
found this anything like a borderline judgment."
Ellis now appears to have run out of avenues for proving the innocence he
claimed throughout his trial and from prison.
Ellis was convicted in 1993 of abusing seven children in his care at the
creche between 1986 and 1991. He was released last February after serving
two-thirds of a 10-year sentence, having previously refused early parole
because that would have required him to acknowledge guilt.
When the Eichelbaum inquiry was announced last March, Children's Commissioner
Roger McClay was adamant the question of Ellis' guilt had been dealt with. He
said he believed people had forgotten it was the children who were the
victims.
"It is of grave concern to me that over the past 6<<1/2>>
years since Ellis' conviction for sexually abusing children, public attention
has been focused almost exclusively on the campaign to clear Ellis'
name," he said at the time. "In the midst of all this, the evidence
of the child victims and their families has been largely ignored."
At the Court of Appeal hearing in 1999, Ellis' lawyer Judith Ablett Kerr QC
spoke of a growing frenzy among creche parents about whether their children
had been involved in some form of ritual abuse.
Mrs Ablett Kerr questioned the techniques used to gain evidence, the
retraction of children's evidence, issues of trial procedure, issues to do
with the jury and the non-disclosure of material to the defence.
Ellis' mother Lesley is in no doubt of her son's innocence, however. When
Ellis was still in prison, she said she never believed anything bad ever
happened at the creche while her son worked there.
"It wasn't difficult to figure out it hadn't happened. I told the
police: `If you can show me he did it I will be the first to get him some
help'."
Captions:
No Pardon: Peter Ellis
contemplates his future after hearing yesterday that the governor-general had
declined his appeal for a pardon.
Roger McClay
Judith Ablett-Kerr
|
